Duster Bomber
Confederate Duster Bomber "I'm not exactly sure this is a good idea..." :- Duster pilot, doubting his aircraft's airworthiness Tactical Analysis * Rugged Aircraft: A jury rigged, improvised strike bomber, rhe Duster is heavily armoured and can take quite a bit of damage before going down. * Up you come: The Duster is armed with a single Tornado OTB that can significantly damage enemy vehicles while throwing them up in the air, exposing them to AA fire and incapacitating them for the time being. The Duster Bomber has rugged landing gear, enabling the crew to land anywhere to avoid enemy AA and assemble the next bomb on the ground. * Only one chance: With no AA armament and only one bomb, the Duster will frequently find itself defenceless and helpless when faced with angry enemies. * Yeeeeeehaw!: Some Duster crews have obtained .50 cal heavy machine guns by grabbing them from pieces of Riptides thrown into the sky by the bomb. Although ineffective against fast moving fighters, the machine guns can put a lot of holes in enemy helicopters. Operational History When the Revolution first started gaining speed, the former Allied soldiers of the new Confederacy did everything they could to secure air support, which many of them could not imagine fighting without after the unprecedented Allied air superiority in the last war. In the days before the Boneyard raid, close air support options were slim; the few existing commercial helicopters were used as scouts, but they were a rarity indeed, and airliners and passenger planes were essentially useless since they cannot be fitted with weapons. Ultimately, it came down to a handful of privately-owned aircraft, known to the Confederates as Duster Bombers, most commonly crop dusters but also airmail, stunt planes, museum pieces and so forth. With their engines supercharged, they were loaded with a variety of bombs and other weapons, and then as much armour plating as possible was bolted on while still allowing the plane take off. Even after proper air support in the form of Skyfortresses and Longbow Helicopters was acquired, Dusters continued to be used by the Rebels due to its unexpected effectiveness. Behind the Scenes The Duster was originally a Stuka dive bomber in the first list, but was replaced by a less professional vehicle to give a better "resistance movement" feel. The Stuka, renamed the Rascal, instead makes an appearance in the Protocols. GLA Devastation Toxin Plane "It's time to embrace the horror." :- Devastation Pilot, spraying a herd of cows Tactical Analysis *'Poison Duster': With tanks full of toxic chemicals, the Devastation is basically an agricultural crop duster, used to spray toxins onto the ground below it. Infantry are known to die in a most gruesome fashion from the inhaled toxins. *'Burning Skies': The toxins of the Devastation happen to be flammable, allowing pilots to ignite the toxins in the air behind it. Such a tactic usually leaves a burning trail behind the Devastation, which has the effect of deterring and damaging pursuing fighters. *'Agricultural Use Only': The Devastation was never designed for military use, and as such it has several flaws, which include it being helpless against fighters (when its toxins are not ignited) and next to useless against tanks. *'Surprise Fireworks': RPGLs are hard to get a hold of for the GLA, but when they can scrounge up some, they often mount them on the only aircraft in the GLA arsenal; the crop dusters. Background After repeated defeats at the hands of the Allies, Soviets and the Syndicate, the various GLA cells learned a lesson: Gun trucks are not capable of shooting down jets and trying to knock down helicopters with terrorists in man cannons is a bad idea. However, some of the smarter warlords learned the more important lesson that effective close air support played a key part in infidel strategy. Seeking an aircraft that could fill the same role, various warlords had their technicians start work on what they thought would be a top secret wonder weapon to drive off infidels from their lands. What follows is a summary of some of a recovered GLA designer's notes on the super secret project that an Allied agent was able to buy off a street urchin for five American dollars: :Idea #1 Make a super cheap jet fighter ::Hoping to close this gap, the GLA initially looked into purchasing modern fighters and bombers, but the various warlords balked after they realised that the cost of such planes would cost them a significant fraction of their personal funds. In order to save as much money as possible, they then looked into the possibility of making a super cheap jet fighter of their own. Within a few weeks, they had developed a design, and built a prototype for testing. The resultant design, using a stolen jet engine, was made out of wood, held together with glue (which was acidic to the wood), and placed the engine above the fuselage. ::The first attempt at a test flight had to be aborted when one of the wings fell off in the middle of takeoff. Shortly after, the wing was repaired, and a second test flight attempted. While this time the plane managed to get off the ground, its test flight ended a minute later, after the cockpit (held on by an old door hinge) came off and got promptly sucked into the engine, causing it to explode. Following this, the GLA simply gave up and decided to use propeller planes instead. :Idea #2 Attach several Vickers machine guns behind the propellers of a stolen prop plane ::The expected goal was pilots would strafe Peacekeeper infantry and dogfight Apollo fighters. The idea was deemed a failure after the technicians forgot to sync the propellers and guns so the guns didn't shoot off said propellers. During its first test, the plane took off toward its fake target, shot its own propellers off, crashed into a near-by barracks, and ejected the pilot into a near-by port a-potty. ::After this debacle, the GLA instead attempted to attach steel deflectors to the plane. This worked in preventing the propellers from being shredded, but unfortunately the poor placement of the deflectors resulted in them being redirected into the engine and the wings when the pilot attempted to fire the machine gun. This resulted in catastrophic engine failure, causing the plane to rapidly lose altitude. Miraculously, none of the bullets struck the pilot's face, who managed to survive by jumping out of the plane and using a large blanket (which coincidentally had a hole in it) as a parachute. Unfortunately, he was mistaken as an infidel pilot by GLA forces (even though there were no infidel aircraft within a hundred kilometres), and nearly had his leg blown off by a machine gun. ::The third attempt was no less sucessful, this one placing a gunner in a mount front of the propeller. During the test flight, the gunner, after having held on for dear life for several seconds, finally tired and let go. The result proved extremely messy, as he was sucked into the propeller blades and was splattered all over the pilot, who promptly freaked out, lost control of his plane, and flew it into the compound of a senior GLA leader. :Idea #3 Weld missiles on the wingtips of a stolen prop plane ::The idea of a machine gun armament (perhaps too) hurriedly written off, the GLA then attempted to arm their air fleet with missiles. Having learned from the lesson of the machine guns, it was decided that the missiles should not be placed anywhere near the propeller. Unfortunately, the GLA couldn't make seekers, so they had to settle for unguided rockets. They would arm their aircraft with rockets that would be mounted on the wingtips, which were wired so that they would be fired off in a single salvo. ::This attempt failed spectacularly as well, because the mechanics had succeeded too well in mounting the rockets, as seen by how they failed to separate from the wingtips of the test aircraft when the pilot attempted to fire them. The result of this unfortunate mishap was that the aircraft was pulled into the ground by its own rockets and promptly destroyed by the explosion of their warheads. Somehow, the pilot managed to survive, though with several broken bones, having been thrown from his plane by the explosion. :Idea #4 Parachute Terrorists out of a stolen freighter plane ::Building on the idea of firing the willing and brave, but most of the time simply plain crazy Terrorists via stolen Bullfrog man cannons at the enemy, a clever rebel came up with a similar concept. If you cannot hit the enemy from below, hit them from above. Thus a bunch of rebels and their Gun Truck aimed to find a suitable fat-bellied airplane and as many parachutes as possible at the nearest airport. ::Attempting to steal the parachutes worked. The idea to steal the airplane, however, failed to get off the ground, because none of the freedom fighters had the necessary licence to fly a freighter plane. Giving up on this plan, the rebels instead asked for a normal jump routine, and parachute jumping has become a popular sport among the GLA members ever since, with its military origin quickly forgotten. :Idea #5 Send terrorists in suicide fighters against enemy aircraft ::The next idea they had was simple: have a terrorist fly an explosive laden prop plane into enemy jets. The pilot would close in on enemy planes and detonate a huge amount of explosives to take out multiple planes at once. What the designers failed to realise was how fast and manoeuvrable jet fighters were in comparison to propeller planes, especially when the propeller planes were weighed down by bombs. ::On the maiden voyage of the first prototype in a battle against Allied forces, it attempted to ram an Apollo fighter. Unfortunately for the GLA pilot, the jet's pilot simply banked slightly to the left, causing the suicide fighter to miss and crash into a garrisoned hotel the GLA were using to hold off the Allies. Most of them were killed except the pilot, who was lucky to be ejected without being killed ... but unlucky enough to crash head first into a manure truck. :Idea #6 Have the pilot throw bombs out the window of the cockpit ::By this point, the GLA had more or less given up on the idea of fighters, but there still remained ground attack planes. Another idea was soon trialled; bombers. The GLA planes, each carrying a single bomb designed to detonate when it hit the ground, would theoretically act as ground attack aircraft, releasing bombs over the heads of the enemy below. ::Unfortunately, the test flight didn't go quite as planned, because when the pilot forced open the plane's door to throw out the bomb at the target (a camel), he ended up losing control of his plane, sending it into an uncontrolled spin and causing it to crash into a sand dune, while the bombs were all ejected out of the aircraft in different directions. ::One of the bombs struck the palace housing the bomb maker, the airplane designer, and warlord providing funding (all sitting around the same table at the time), killing them and heavily damaging the palace. It was realised thereafter how ludicrously inaccurate the bombs would be (none of them did any harm to the camel), so the GLA gave up on the idea of bombers as well. :Idea #7 Arm the pilot with darts ::With the repeated failures, it was decided to use safer weaponry, so as to prevent pilots from blowing themselves up. One idea that soon made it to testing was to have a plane that would drop darts on their targets. Because metal skinned airplanes were too tough for darts to penetrate, the darts were intended to be used against infantry and airships, which were sufficiently soft that darts would work against them. ::However, as the test flight soon showed, attempts to hit infantry sized targets inevitably resulted in the pilot missing (in part thanks to their poor eyesight), while attempts to attack a Soviet observation airship failed because the GLA had failed to realise that the airship's flight ceiling was several times greater than that of the plane. Nevertheless, the test pilot attempted to throw several darts up at the airship, until one accidentally hit him and caused an immense amount of pain, at which point the pilot simply gave up and flew back to base. ::Eventually, after a ridiculous number of failures they came up with idea of using a crop duster to spray DDT over enemies. To keep enemy fighters off the pilot's back, the toxins may be ignited in midair, leaving behind a massive fire trail that can damage even modern aircraft. However, the planes and their sprinkler systems are poorly armoured and assembled, held together with mostly bailing wire and cheap, knock-off duct tape. Despite this, these Devastation Toxin Planes have proved successful; several warlords have begun buying or assembling their own in workshops, and the aircraft have already laid waste to dozens of wheat fields belonging to infidel farmers and killed off goodness-knows-how-many livestock. Behind the Scenes * Accepted suggestion made by go123452. * If the Generals GLA had controllable air units, this would likely have been one of them. Category:Units